Twenty Seven X Three
by On The Surface
Summary: AU Drabble, Duncan-centric. 'It’s the emptiness that gets you.' Dark themes, now an M.


**Twenty-Seven X Three**

_AU-Drabble, Dark-Duncan-centric. It's the emptiness that gets you._

Standard disclaimer applied. This story is told from Duncan's PoV.

The world is quiet here.

The kind of quiet that gives you the eerie feeling you're being deafened.

The kind of quiet you feel inside your head when you're mad, because you don't think, you just react.

Left. Right. Left. Right.

…

It's the emptiness that gets you.

I should start from the beginning. The commencement, foundation, inauguration, the launch. Whatever you call it. It's all the same.

This is my failure. This is a tape. I'm telling a story. Know why? The guards think I'm insane.

They're wrong.

My name is Duncan.

I don't care about my last name; it's something that's forgotten in time. Where I am, so is your first.

I am Prisoner 27X3.

It may not make sense, so let me explain.

I'm in jail, which should have been obvious. I am Prisoner number twenty-seven, Security Level X, on floor three.

Just so you know; Security Level X is the highest. The third floor is the lowest of the twelve stories to contain jail cells. I never got why they put the most extreme convicts on the floor closest to the door leading outside.

Mind games, I tell you.

All of the guards here are pushovers. Anyone could escape from this place. But that's the thing.

No one does, because they're afraid of the outside world. They're afraid that even if they repent, if they manage to leave, the people they've known will shun them.

I didn't get their feelings.

It's why I have no regrets for what I've done.

My name is Duncan. I killed my wife two years ago. If, somehow, you see this tape…

I'm not sorry.

Now, let's go to the real beginning.

I married her, Courtney, when I was thirty-four. She was half a year younger than me. We were madly in love.

I took her to Italy on our honeymoon. We ate in front of the Great Coliseum. We made out on a gondola in Venice. The passers-by called us a 'piece of perfection.'

Liars.

I admit that most of this was my fault. Mine, oh mine. A year after we got married, she was pregnant.

But hell no, not by me.

She was admirably abstinent, which I respected. Her choice, whatever. I didn't want kids anyway, too much of a hassle.

So when she came home, telling me she was pregnant, I was, at first, confused. She kept trying to tell me that I'd been drunk a few nights before. We both had been.

That was a lie. I didn't drink. Couldn't stand the burn of alcohol.

Plus, a few nights ago she had been out of town. We lived in Raleigh. She was a senator and something in her work demanded that she be in Seattle for six nights.

Or so she said.

When she came home pregnant, I wasn't so sure.

Abstinent my left foot. The liar.

She'd hated me, I could tell. The first year of our marriage had been tough. She had just become a senator and her work was making her unstable. I was a banker who worked late into the night sometimes, behind the scenes. Making sure everything was ready for the next day.

She hated me for that.

When she got home all she wanted to do was be with me. But I was never there. She never said anything, I didn't notice.

Ignorance is bliss, they say.

But that's a lie too.

My ignorance led her to hate me. She began to see other men. I'd always had my suspicions. They were never confirmed until she came home from Seattle, pregnant.

I was pissed. Oh yes.

She betrayed my trust in her. She betrayed everything that I thought we had together.

So, in my frustration, we fought.

_All you think about when you're angry is the anger. It wells inside, consuming thought. You don't even know why you're angry anymore. _

_But I do._

Words of fury rolled off my tongue. The guards here that are letting me tape this won't let me say what I said. Its part of our deal, I get to tape this, to prove to myself I'm not insane, but I'm not allowed to go all out in the details or what I said.

I just get to say what I have to say.

Infuriating.

Now that I'm taping this, relaying the information back to myself. I wonder if I _am_ insane. But I don't care.

It doesn't matter to me if I'm insane.

It only matters that I was right. And she was wrong. The liar.

I hated her. That's what I told her. That and other things.

Then she got what she deserved. I killed her. Shotgun. Kept it in my desk drawer ever since a burglar had broken in when we were gone five months prior.

Shot her. Five times.

Right arm, left leg.

The chest.

The head. Twice.

I watched her die. Not sad, not happy. Not mad.

Not insane.

But damn, was I _right._ Everything I did was _right._

How she must've hated that. I made sure she was dead, too. I checked. Three times.

It didn't hurt me that I'd killed the baby too. It wasn't mine.

Whatever.

My name is Duncan.

I killed my wife two years ago. And I am not sorry.

I am Prisoner 27X3. Twenty-seventh, Security Level X, floor three.

The world is quiet here.

But it's the emptiness that gets you.

**End.**


End file.
